THE ADVENTURE OF NATALIE'S FIRST CONTACTS

Book: Saling To Sarantium - Guy Key
Song: Cooler Than Me - Mike Posner
Food: Congee (I just ate at Congee Wong's yesterday)
Quote: "If we don't end war, war will end us." - H. G. Wells



I recently got my new contacts today. They're test runs to see if I can handle them or not.
They're soft lenses which means they should be more comfortable and less irritating than hard lenses.
Now get your butt comfy in a big boss chair, grab a super-sized bucket of greasy buttery popcorn, a diet coke and maybe even your favorite plushie because this is my adventure of my first contacts.



THE ADVENTURE OF NATALIE'S FIRST CONTACTS



The minute our little red car scuttle into the driveway, I took off to my bedroom and plunged into an unmade sea of blankets.
My plans for today got squished and the humid air both made my hair go flat and oilier, but made my mood go flat and apparently... oilier. I stole Charlie from the corner of my bedroom and plucked an E string. The noise buzzed through the room.
I just went to the eye-people's place - as I like to call them. You and Eye Optical.
Catchy.
There I got to pick out my new pair of glasses, a sheek and simple squarish black frame. I was happy with my new findings, sashaying around the small store, swiping huge motorcycle-like sunglasses, propping them up my nose and pulling funny faces into the surrounding mirrors.

Until, I heard the dreaded word: Contacts.

Back in grade 3, I ADORED contacts! You can even say I was absolutely in love with them. I thought they were so cool, how you got to squirt 'em down with transparent chemicals, poke them in and out of your eyes and store them back up until tomorrow's morning.
Then grade 4 struck and I realized how uncanny I looked without glasses. I am one of those people where glasses can add accents to your strikingly boring face. With no frames on my face, I look terrible.
Something in my gut triggered a burp. My head twirled over and like a dog, my ears sprang up.
"I can give you 3 pairs of soft lenses to try on for Natalie."
Of course, contacts were cool and everything... they seemed like a breeze.
So there we went, trooping out the store with a dinky purple gift-bag of contact essentials.

My mom caught me in my room, hands clicking over my computer's keyboards, silently cursing as I played Grand Theft Auto. She ordered me to the washroom.
There she explained how to properly keep good care of your contacts.
Always begin the procedure with your right contact, never add in tap water, try not to drop it and BE CLEAN. She also presented me with a little slip of paper and ran down to the kitchen where a faint scent of charcoal started to waft through the house.
The miniscule font basically instructed you how to keep your contacts clean, the do's and don'ts of contact safety and how to remove and insert them.

• Place one lens on the tip of your index finger.
  
• Keep your head up and look straight ahead.


• Pull down your lower eyelid with the middle of your finger of your opposite hand.


• Look up steadily at a point above you. Place the lens of the lower white of your eye. Remove you index finger and release lower lid.


• Look down. Close you eyes for a moment, and the lens will center itself.


• Repreat procedure with other lens.


• After putting both lenses in, rinse the lens case with your preferred multi-purpose solution and allow to dry.

Easy right?

So I went ahead and Viet-squatted myself up on the bathroom counter, leaning my face close into the mirror. (My mom gave me a smaller mirror for comfort but it didn't help much).

The problem was, it wouldn't slip in. And the other problem was - I couldn't stop blinking!

Okay... put it in the bottom white *blink!*

Shoot. Okay, one more time. *blink!*

DAMMIT. Okay okay. Keep going...

blink!blink!blink!blink!blink!blink!

After a long while of unsuccessful attempts, Mom came upstairs, bathed the contact in solution again, split open my eyelids and slid it in with ease. I was flabbergasted. She repeated and the left one went in.
Oooh. The sensation of your first contacts. I wanted to dance! No more glasses!
But everything was so... unleveled. Like... double rainbow. Omigod.
Dancing was going to be a definite challenge. Cross that off the list of What to do When You Have Contacts. So I played with Charlie, read a book, played Paper Mario and ate Mayan Chocolate icecream. Whoop!
I spent some time in them and just around 6, I had enough. They had to come out.
Removing them is a whole other tale worthy for sometime later. But let me tell you, it was twice as funny and all the more blinking.